Draft Local Plan (2015-2030)

The current Local Plan covering the Isles of Scilly was adopted in 2005. You can view this together with its accompanying Supplementary Planning Documents on our Current Local Plan (2005) pages. In June 2015 the Local Planning Authority started a review of the Isles of Scilly Local Plan. The new Local Plan is intended to plan strategically for the period 2015 - 2030.

You can find out about the planned progress of the Local Plan Review in the Key Stages Timetable link to the right of this page. This is also known as the Local Development Scheme (LDS). The latest revised timetable was approved at Full Council on the 8th May 2018 and is known as LDS5. This superseded LDS4 which was adopted in August 2017 and will be updated as necessary to reflect any changes to this process. If you would like to be kept informed about local plan and be consulted directly then you can be added to our Local Plan Consultation Database by completing the Registration Form (PDF or WORD) to the right of this page.

The Local Plan process will be carried out in accordance with our adopted Local Development Scheme LDS (Aug 2017) which is our timetable of local plan preparation and our Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) adopted in 2015, which sets out the methods by which we engage with the public and our statutory consultees.

Second Stage (Regulation 18 Consultation) 2018

The Planning Department are about to embark on a second round of public consultation which will be a consultation on the Draft Local Plan 2015-2030 and 5 consultation options. The consultation is due to take place from early March for a period of 8 weeks. This page will be updated shortly when the consultation is open for comments.

First Stage (Regulation 18 Consultation) 2015

We wrote to all residents about the public consultation and published the ‘Local Plan Review: Scoping Report’ setting out our intention to progress a new local plan and public consultation. The consultation on this took place from the 8th June to the 24th July 2015.

We had an excellent response to the consultation. Around 117 people turned out to speak to us at our drop-in sessions and we received 80 written responses. A summary of the consultation and what you told us can be found in the link to the right Summary Of Responses this also includes the Officer responses to these comments.

We’d like to thank the community for excellent engagement in the review process so far and we look forward to talking to you again during the next stage of the process.

The Evidence Base

Since 2015 we have been working hard to gather the necessary evidence base which has included the critically important Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) to understand the islands' housing needs. As part of this process we appointed David Couttie Associates to undertake this work. This included a Housing Survey and an assessment of National and Local demographic and migration statistics and trends. The outcome of this work is critical to inform the Housing Figure for the new local plan and identify how many homes we have to plan for over the period.You can find out more on why this is required on the National Planning Practice Guidance Website. The final full SHMA 2016 report can now be downloaded. The Key Findings of the SHMA 2016 can also be downloaded.

Concurrently Officers have been working on the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA). This has required us to work closely with our partner organisations to identify potential suitable housing sites. This work will be critical to demonstrate that any identified need for housing could be delivered over the next 5 years. You can find out more on why this is necessary on the National Planning Practice Guidance Website. The 2016 SHLAA is published here. Any future updates will be published on this page. If you have a site that you would like the Planning Department to consider for housing then please email the Council at planning@scilly.gov.uk.

In order to understand housing viability issues the Council appointed Three Dragons to carry out independent housing viability assessment. The results of this are due in February 2018 and the report will be published below shortly.

Key Evidence Base Documents

Local Strategies that have influenced the draft Local Plan (2015-2030) include:

Running in parallel to the local plan process is the required environmental impact assessment. You can find out more on this process by following the links on the left of this page Sustainability Appraisal. The Local Planning Authority recently appointed Enfusion: Sustainability Environmental Planning Consultants to carry our the Sustainability Appraisal including the HRA of the Local Plan process. As each stage of the Local Plan progresses it will be subject to Sustainability Appraisal.

Want to be on our Consultation Database?

If you’d like to be included on the Local Planning Authority's consultation database, please complete and return the attached registration form on the left of this page. Once registered, you will be notified when a relevant document is open to public consultation and invited to engage in the process.